Forty aid trucks carrying food supplies for 80,000 people had been waiting on the border with Turkey to get into the rebel held east of Aleppo where an estimated 250,000 people are living under siege by government forces. SANA said the shelling violates the cease-fire.
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Mazen al-Shami, an opposition activist near Damascus, said government forces tried to storm Jobar but were repelled by opposition fighters.
De Mistura said Thursday that the two brokers of the deal, Russian Federation and the USA, are expected to produce a plan for disengagement from the road, and “are working hard to achieve that”.
SANA accused the insurgents of launching the attack, triggering retaliation by government forces.
Earlier on Thursday, activists said the cease-fire was still holding despite some violations. The Observatory on Thursday reported the first three deaths since the cease-fire went into effect.
Under the terms of the deal, if peace holds for seven days, Russian Federation and the United States will begin coordinated military strikes against targeted terror groups in the conflict.
The United States told Russian Federation on Friday it will not set up a committee to enable joint targeting of militants in Syria until humanitarian aid begins to flow to the besieged city of Aleppo and other areas, the State Department said.
As part of the truce deal, the rebels and the Syrian government are supposed to agree to the deployment of a security force to protect checkpoints along the route to Aleppo to ensure aid delivery to the city’s opposition sector, which has been besieged by Russian-backed government forces since July.
An AFP correspondent said no movement could be seen on the rubble-strewn Castello Road, the main route for humanitarian assistance in to divided Aleppo.
“Syrian government troops and opposition forces would need to withdraw up to 3km from the road with their heavy weapons”.
Staffan de Mistura, the special envoy, noted that aid for eastern Aleppo, which also required permission from the regime, was being blocked by the Syrian government and opposition fighters.
“Humanitarian conditions are very hard”.
Aside from the reducing the bloodshed, the “second dividend” of the U.S. -Russia deal is humanitarian access, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.
The strained rhetoric came as the first United Nations aid convoy bound for besieged eastern Aleppo remained stuck in the absence of permits from Damascus.
De Mistura said some people had used the argument that offices were closed during this week’s Muslim Eid holiday, and the Syrian government had been “a little bit slow” during Eid, but he would not accept that as a valid reason.
He said Russian Federation needed to use its influence over Syrian President Bashar Assad to ensure that humanitarian aid was delivered to besieged communities under the agreement.
Meanwhile, Jan Egeland, the Advisor to the Special Envoy, reiterated “the good news is that our people on the ground confirmed that the cessation of hostilities is largely holding, the killing has been greatly reduced, in fact no reports on civilian killings the last 24 hours”.
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He adds that while rebels were ready to withdraw from the area, they were also tired of the government exploiting the move to stage an advance. It has been a major flashpoint in the war.
